Charita Goshay: The Rapture? Too much to do, no time to do it

Monday

May 23, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 23, 2011 at 11:17 PM

Harold Camping, founder of the Family Radio Network, and Allison Warden, whose group, WeCanKnow.com, rented 50 billboards for the event, were among those doomsayers who probably were shocked to wake up Sunday in their own skins.

Charita Goshay

Here’s hoping you didn’t cancel your cable and go off your diet in anticipation of the Rapture, which some wacky Christian fundamentalists predicted would occur Saturday, May 21, 2011.

I’m guessing you still had hungry kids and a mountain of laundry Sunday morning, and you still had go to work Monday. And since dogs can’t read calendars, they probably had to be fed and walked, too.

Harold Camping, founder of the Family Radio Network, and Allison Warden, whose group, WeCanKnow.com, rented 50 billboards for the event, were among those doomsayers who probably were shocked to wake up Sunday in their own skins.

Predestination

The May 21 prediction-that-wasn’t is the latest in a long line of barnyard prophets warning Christians to prepare for the Rapture, or the “catching away” of believers from the Earth, followed by Jesus’ return to Earth to settle all family business, as they say in “The Godfather.”

But God knows better than to hand us that kind of information in advance. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said no one knows the day of his return, but what does he know? Warden said her group determined the May 21 date by their own interpretation of Scripture.

Camping had previously predicted the end would come in 2001. OK. Or not.

Warden, who didn’t quit her day job, incidentally, has said she believes in “predestination,” that is, God has already decided who will be saved and who will fry like a tortilla chip.

But that would make null and void God’s own words in Genesis that we are made in his image; namely, that we’re beings of free will.

Don’t look up

The world can be a toxic, caustic, overwhelming place, so it’s no wonder some people get it into their heads to focus on horizons beyond their present circumstances.

Life here has always been difficult. According to Genesis, we didn’t make it past the third chapter before we pushed paradise into a ditch.

But religion is not an escape hatch; it’s not a means by which we have permission to disengage from living, but rather a pathway by which to start.

In some ways, every day is judgment day. Our acts of commission and omission, the ways in which we treat one other and our use of the planet we’ve been given will demand answers from each of us in the days to come.

Instead of looking up, look around. There’s something each of us can do to make the world a little bit better place than when Jesus left it. Now, get back to work.